I’m good. I got home from Europe two days ago and have had a pretty massive week. I was over in America and then Nazare in Portugal for the Big Wave awards. Now, I have a week at home before I head back to Europe again. A lot of fun.
It was pretty amazing to win Surfer of the Year alongside Nathan Florence who is another incredible big-wave surfer. Especially after my journey in big wave surfing for the last seven years, it has been an incredible road. And then, to back up my world record with another really good season, it was pretty special.
The Eddie Aikau has to be the most prestigious surfing event. It’s been going on for so many years and all of the best surfers in the world have at one point or another surfed in the event, especially big wave surfers.
It’s named in honour of Eddie Aikau, who was an incredible Hawaiian water man and it’s a big celebration of surfing in a one-day event.
For the event to run, the waves have to be 20 feet [from the back of the wave], with a 22-second swell period, which makes it basically 40 to 50-foot faces [equivalent to a three-storey building].
So that wave for me was the pinnacle of my career. It was by far the biggest wave I’d ever even seen in my life.
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And because I’d paddled into it myself, it made it so much more special. The moment that I stood up on that wave, it felt like the years of sacrifice and hard work that I’d poured into big wave surfing was for that moment.
The biggest difference is breath-hold training and preparing yourself for the worst-case scenario, which is getting stuck in the impact zone and smashed by huge waves. Sometimes, there are 10 wave sets where you have to be able to hold your breath and stay calm throughout. So in the pool, we pretend that I could be in one of those situations and my trainer will spin me around underwater and try to thrash me around.
And then, I’ve got to keep my heart rate down. And then we do it over and over and over again. The longest breath hold that I’ve been able to get up to is about three and a half minutes in the pool.
Oh, Jaws [Pe’ahi in Hawai’i]. It scares me. I got a pretty bad injury there when I was 25 and I’m still yet to get a good wave at that spot. So to go back there and get a proper wave there is a massive goal of mine. But also, I feel like no plan is the best plan.
When I started surfing big waves I would go down and be the only girl at many of these waves. And sometimes I was getting the wipeout of the day. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so embarrassing.” People are going to be thinking, ‘Why is she here?’”
But then, the guys would wipe out as well and they wouldn’t think anything of it. But it felt so huge when I was being wiped out. And I think that’s the only way you’re going to know how to do it. I think sometimes eating shit first is the best way to get over any hesitation.
